by Jim Kohlberg
“Nice to know you haven’t changed, Max. Still not putting up with the social conventions.”
“Social lies you mean.”
He stood firing-squad straight. He had waited for my volley, and now that it had come, he seemed surprised. I was. Just a second ago I had felt that familiar undertow of affection and excitement. He nodded.
“I guess I deserve that,” he said.
“Look, Joe, I’m not here to . . . to go over old ground. Just tell me what you want and why you called.”
He sighed. “All right, if that’s the way it feels best for you.” He raised the first two fingers of his right hand and waved lazily at the bartender, then turned back to me.
“Things are bad.”
“You said that on the phone. Call some lawyers. You have plenty. Call her accountants. You can buy any one of those. Call all those people who jump when you raise a pinky finger.”
“It’s not like that. It’s worse.”
“Worse than not paying your taxes?” I said.
“Look, Max, it’s not about taxes; I mean, yes, it’s the IRS thugs, but they think someone’s . . . they’re trying to pin me with bribing officials.”
“You bribed an official?”
“No. No way. Do you think I’m that fuckin’ stupid?”
“I never thought so. Why are they leaning on you then?”
The bartender put a fresh glass of Lagavulin on the bar. The old-fashioned tumbler had his preferred two ice cubes in it, and the girl shot Joe an appraising glance, but he didn’t catch it. Joe had rarely missed a look like that before. He lifted his glass and swirled the amber liquor, then said, “Because I’ve got a lot of investors. Rich guys. Very high net worth. They’ve been . . . I’ve been doing tax straddles for these guys. They’re aggressive about it.”
“So? That still doesn’t explain why the IRS is coming after you.”
“They think I knew what these guys were doing!”
“Did you?”
“No. How many times do I have to tell you? No way. I just did the straddles. It’s all legal. They’re not my fucking returns.”
“The same old crap: Not my job. Not my responsibility. Not my tax returns.”
“Don’t you get high and mighty on me. You’re a tax accountant. Not a tax lawyer.”
“Well. It finally comes out. The famous Joe Dempsey arrogance. People always told me about it. But I guess the charm never slipped in front of me before, right?”
Joe grabbed his drink off the glossy wood of the bar and tossed the ice and booze into his mouth. He brought his jaw down on the ice, and the crunching sound popped between us. The muscles in his jaw bunched, and from the side I could see real fire in his eyes. He pushed out a lungful of air and dropped the glass on the bar. The bartender trotted from the other end and poured another double shot of single malt into the empty glass. She held up a spoonful of ice. Joe nodded. As the ice fell, I watched. Joe was scared. And I’d never seen him scared. Scared enough to lose the charm, to drop the wit, to freeze the easy smile.
I saw him pull himself back, braced by another slug from the tumbler. His tongue flicked out to lick his lips. He kept looking at the glass, turning it with his hand.
Talking just loud enough for me to hear, as the bartender returned to her station, he said, “The Service thinks I’ve been making payoffs to get favorable treatment and keep these straddles from being audited.”
“Have you?” I asked again.
“No.” He turned to me. “Jesus.”
I saw fear in his eyes again and I couldn’t help but feel the hardness loosening in my chest.
“I don’t know what I can do.”
“You’re the only one I trust. Because you’re not . . . my friend.”
“You mean because I’m not an employee, or a customer,” I said. “What are they after?”
“They say they’re after me. But I think they want me to roll over and tell them about my investors. Typical thuglike behavior from the Service, you know.”
“The Service stopped doing that years ago.”
“I know, but they put Redfield on it.”
“It’s bad to get a bounce like that out of the starting gate, but he can’t find something that’s not there.”
“I’m clean, Max. I swear. I mean, in the bribery stuff. I’m not saying the straddle wasn’t aggressive.”
“Maybe it’s just personal then.”
“No. He keeps asking about Kessler and Stoppard.”
“You got them?”
“Yeah. They’re the ones I’ve been doing straddles for. You have to talk to him. At least Armand knows you won’t lie. Even for me.”
“Okay, Joe. I’ll come over to the office in the morning and take a look at the docs. But Armand’s right about one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I won’t lie. Even for you.”
“You mean especially for me.”
“Maybe I do,” I said. I slid away from the bar and left him looking into his glass.
“I should have invited you to the wedding, old man,” he said, still looking down.
I said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” And I turned away. I could see him throw a look at me in the mirror and jut his chin in some kind of troubled acknowledgment.
I walked out and found mist. The fog had descended and covered the green oily water in the gutters, and the neon signs glowed red behind the wet haze. My footsteps muffled themselves until I reached my car and sparked the engine into life.
Chapter 5
Joe Dempsey’s office was over past Union Square across the street from the old Chronicle building, a squat fortress of granite on the ragged edge of the Mission District. Built in the ’30s under a WPA grant, the building’s huge stones were stacked together with exquisite care. Now it straddled the skyscrapers of the financial district and the disaster of San Francisco’s Mission, its abandoned lots, the homeless trailing pushcarts, dealers and customers using the streets as store, bedroom, and toilet.
Even though Joe’s office was on the edge of the Mission, it didn’t straddle. It was squarely downtown: black leather, blond wood, secretaries in tight skirts and loose shirts, or loose skirts and tight shirts, phones ringing off the hook, and a huge cavernous bullpen where traders bought, sold, and originated the mortgages and debt securities that were the lifeblood of his business. He had built it up from a storefront to a corner office in the financial district over the ten years after Andersen, until he bought the building and converted it to his own image. He said he wanted to give something back. I always figured it for just one more of Joe’s angles. A tax rebate, a tax-free office for the mayor down on the twentieth floor, something.
The elevators opened and bedlam wafted over me. But it wasn’t the bullpen chaos with traders shouting over computer banks with phones welded to their ears. The traders all sat at their desks, some with heads in their hands. Assistants had puffy eyes. Uniformed cops stood at the elevator and ran to and fro across the bullpen. A big cop with pale skin and Asian features stood next to the marble reception desk, his hands on his belt. The receptionist spoke slowly into her headset, her wide eyes on the cop, having an out-of-body experience as she put calls through to the maelstrom in the bullpen and the walls crumbled around her. A bunch of guys in white shirts and dark ties and gray pants were lugging boxes past me. One man, a balding jar cut with beefeater arms, barreled past me, clipping me with a corner of a cardboard box full of files.
“Where are you going with those?”
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Are those Joe’s files?”
“Who. Are. You,” he said, spacing it out. He turned around and pushed the box closer to me. He held it at chest level, forcing me to take a step back.
“Where’s Joe?” I asked
He turned with the box and faced the reception area.
“Tony?”
One of the blue uniforms stuck his head around a door frame.
“Yeah?”
“ID this guy, will you?”
“Sure.”
He turned back to me, then put the box down on the corner of a desk. He waited for Tony.
Tony walked up to me with small, careful steps and stopped a couple of yards away and spread his feet. He hooked a thumb in his belt on his gun side. There was a creak of leather in the silence.
“My name is Max Smoller,” I said.
I reached into my coat pocket for my wallet. I tugged out my driver’s license. Tony took a step toward me and grabbed it, his thumb, nail bitten down to the quick, on top. He turned it toward him with an awkward arm twist, keeping his hand on his belt.
“What’s your business here, Mr. Smoller?”
“I’m Joe Dempsey’s accountant.”
“You have an appointment?”
“No. I doubt I was on his schedule. I just wanted to talk to him. We’re old friends.”
Tony looked over at the man, who was picking up the box again.
“Mr. Guthrie?”
Guthrie nodded. Tony stepped back to me, handed me back my license, with his arm at his side. The tension drained out of his stance.
“How long have you known Mr. Dempsey?” asked Guthrie.
“I’ve been doing his taxes since he started,” I said. I looked into the box he was holding. It had manila folders with the tabs facing me. They were all numbered by year.
“Joe didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, nodding at the box. “I’m sure his taxes were in order. I did them myself.”
“I think we’ll find out,” Guthrie said. “You do Joe’s clients also?”
I shrugged and said, “Some.”
“How many?”
“Enough. What’s this about?”
Guthrie turned his ice-blue eyes at me, and I watched a quietness behind them that I couldn’t place.
“Come with me,” he said.
I followed without asking the questions filling my thoughts. They couldn’t get past my lips. Guthrie lugged the box out to reception and handed it to Tony, who was standing around, watching everyone and writing in a little spiral notebook. Tony took it. I finally got a question out. “Where are we going?”
“2305 Divisadero.”
“Joe’s house?”
“That’s right.”
“Who are you?”
Guthrie turned to me, the questions still in the air, a look of surprise on his face. He put out a square hand, big and soft. “I’m Terry Guthrie, district attorney.”
“Why are we going to Joe’s?”
“Because Joe’s over there.”
“Joe didn’t do anything. He may be aggressive but he never crosses the line,” I said. “I never let him.”
“We’ll check his records. If what you say is true, I’m sure there’ll be no problem.” He kept moving. “Your car downstairs?”
We were out of the lobby, standing in front of the elevator bank. Guthrie shrugged into his suit coat, then raised a brown felt Stetson from his side and settled it on his head with his fingers holding the crown.
“Your car outside?” he asked again.
I nodded. It seemed like that was all I could do.
“I got the gray Chevy out front. You can follow me.”
The ride down was silent except for the hum of the elevator dropping us forty floors in twenty seconds, almost as fast as a free fall. It stopped before we broke our legs.
Out on the street he pointed out a late model Caprice, the tires without whitewalls betraying it as government issue. The white business plate with “California Government” stamped in the right corner didn’t help, either. I followed him out of the Mission, up Van Ness and into Pacific Heights until we hit the crest of Divisadero, then on to Joe’s.
We got out in bright sunshine that had gone unnoticed in the shade of the tall buildings downtown. Joe’s stone and stucco mansion dazzled in the sun, its windows blinking. There were three squad cars parked out front and an unmarked white van in the driveway. I squinted into a building headache and followed Guthrie’s broad back up Joe’s white terrazzo steps to the open door.
When I stepped through the antique oak double doors and into the black-and-white marble foyer, there were a couple of cops in uniforms standing around. More men in white shirts and ties wore rubber gloves. My feet stopped of their own accord. My heart started hammering. Insistent. Guthrie turned and faced me, with his back to the staircase sweeping upward.
“We tried to find someone else,” he said. “But we couldn’t.”
“Someone else?”
“It’s bad news. I’m afraid your friend Joe is dead,” he said. I heard the words, and I heard other things, my heart thudding, of course, a leaking faucet in the bathroom down the hall, or a toilet running. But the stupid thing was the quiet. And the pressure. I felt like I had come down from forty thousand feet and hadn’t been able to clear my ears. Like I wanted someone to bang me on the head if it wouldn’t stop.
Guthrie took my elbow and led me up the stairs. I watched the floor railing come level with my head as if I were on some hidden machinery. I had no sensation of my legs moving. He turned to me, the quietness in his eyes, all over his face, all over me. I took a step back and the banister, waist level now, stopped me from falling down the stairwell.
“He’s in great shape,” I said.
Guthrie nodded. “He’s dead.”
“He runs twenty miles a week. Marathons. Bikes up mountains. Softball games. Squash. Something every day. Every day. He’s a fanatic. His blood pressure is a hundred five over seventy-five, standing heart rate forty-five.”
“He played softball?” Guthrie asked.
“He plays in a league, with the guys from Firehouse 241.” Christina used to sit on the sidelines in jeans and a sweatshirt; she managed to look as put together as if she wore a Chanel suit.
“I know. I’m sorry, but he’s dead, Max. We need you to help us.”
I nodded.
“Heart attack? Like Fixx?” Jim Fixx was the fitness runner guru who dropped dead of a heart attack while jogging, back in the 1980s.
“No. I’m sorry. He was murdered,” said Guthrie. “With his softball bat,” he added.
I shook my head. “There’s no way,” I said. “No way.”
I reached for the railing then, held on to it for all it was worth. I put my head down on its cool grained walnut, as if its immovability could create something to ground me. My legs got rubbery and I sat down on the carpet abruptly with my back against the wall and put my head between my knees.
“It’s a positive ID. Prints. We’ll get the DNA back in a couple of days. Everything,” Guthrie said. “I know it’s hard to believe.”
“He was only forty-three,” I said. “Is he still here?”
“No. We took him downtown.”
I sat with my head between my knees and looked at the carpet. When my breathing settled, I leaned back and bounced the back of my head on the wall. The pain felt sweet somehow, though I didn’t do it for long.
“Why am I here?” I asked Guthrie, who towered over me.
“We need your help with his files.” I stared up at him.
“I told you. His taxes are in order. I did most of them myself except for the last couple of years.”
“Come over and look at this.”
He put out a hand, but I rolled onto a knee and pushed myself up with a hand on the wall. He turned quickly and walked down the hall to the double doors that led to the master bedroom.
Joe had laughed when the designer showed the double bedroom doors on the plans.
“What chick’s gonna want to walk through some colonnade to get to my bedroom?” he said. “I’ll never get laid here. You got to slide them in, not announce it like some coronation.” But he let them talk him into it. He and Christina were still a dry brushfire waiting for lightning to strike, or a match. I never thought she would walk through that doorway, or that Joe would invite her.
The doors we
re open and the French windows had gauzy draped linen over them. I could see Joe’s view of the bay and the Sausalito hills. The bed was stripped, and the cover was spread out on the floor on the left side. To the right was a huge, amoebic stain on the rug, its edge climbing the mattress. I could see where it had crusted in the fiber pile. My chest started thudding again. I broke out in a cold sweat that started in my stomach, the kind you get when your blood sugar’s low and you feel hollow and shaky. In the corner was a cherry table desk with some books, an Apple laptop, assorted writing tools. On one corner lay a lefty first baseman’s glove. Underneath the desk in the corner of the wall was a scuffed softball. There was no chair at the desk, and it made me angry. His lone desk, denuded, stripped like the room. Like Joe’s future. Like mine.
“Where’s the chair?” I asked Guthrie. He shrugged, then turned and waited and put his hands behind his back. “Where’s the goddamn chair?”
“They probably took it,” he said softly.
A tech walked through the room, dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His arms were covered with dense black hair, and it was matted against the clear plastic gloves he wore up to the elbows. He looked at Guthrie with a frown and downward tilt to his head, like a schoolteacher disappointed in a star pupil. Guthrie looked back at him.
“We’ll be done in a minute.”
“There’s no need,” he said, picked up a pen lying on the desk, and left. I couldn’t figure out whether he meant there was no need to leave or to be here at all. Guthrie walked over to the desk and unlocked a drawer. He pulled it out, then lifted files that had powder and smudges all over them.
Guthrie searched for a clean place to put them, then finally put them on top of the desk and flipped them open.
“This is Joe’s?” he asked. I took a step toward the desk. I didn’t want to get any closer. I didn’t want to get under the surface of things. I wanted somebody else to clean up Joe’s stuff and I wanted to go home and soak in Scotch or eat Valium or inhale my stack of weed or stare at baseball games on the television for a week. Anything to bludgeon reality back into submission. “Is it your work?” asked Guthrie.
I sidled closer.
I was close enough to the desk to see the file. Inside was a photocopy of a will. The opening paragraphs had the usual preambles, the obligatory whereases. It was not hard to read the heading: Last Will and Testament of Mr. Joseph Edwards Dempsey.